Historic urban landscapes and visualising Ballarat : Citizen participation for sustainable urban planning and design
- Authors: Murphy, Angela , Dahlhaus, Peter , Thompson, Helen
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings , Conference paper
- Relation: 3rd Annual Conference of Research@Locate, R@Loc 2016; Melbourne, Australia; 12th-14th April 2016; published in CEUR Workshop Proceedings
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- Description: Technological innovation has provided enhanced capacity for knowledge building, for connection and for improved infrastructure planning in the development of the modern city. In parallel to the building of technology supported urban planning and design capacity, a debate has emerged around the need to maximise citizen participation in urban planning. The role of identity, culture and social context has been assessed as being as integral to sustainability in urban planning as is infrastructure management. In 2011 UNESCO, through the mechanism of the recommendation for Historic Urban Landscapes (HUL), created an imperative for the overt recognition of the role of culture, place and identity in sustainable urban planning. The City of Ballarat, Victoria, was the first of a series of international cities to pilot HUL and commit to inclusive citizen based collaboration in urban planning. Through online technology, a platform for partnership building was established. Developed and supported through the Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation at Federation University Australia, the HUL and Visualising Ballarat portals track the diversity of urban landscapes-from built environment to geomorphology to cultural identity-and facilitate their inclusion in planning and resource allocation. Crowdsourcing was promoted as pivotal in this process, while spatial innovation provided a means through which to bring to life the notion of distinctiveness, identity and place. Through mapping intangibles across complex and diverse groups within community, the potential for improving the quality and management of the planning process was found to be enhanced. Local Area Planning provided a mechanism for a conceptual alignment of past and present and the voice of community has gained a stronger (and more disruptive) voice in determining what communities' value within their lived environment. This shift was assessed as playing an important, and increasingly recognised, role in sustainable urban planning and design.
- Description: CEUR Workshop Proceedings
Making the invisible visible : The impact of federating groundwater data in Victoria, Australia
- Authors: Dahlhaus, Peter , Murphy, Angela , MacLeod, Andrew , Thompson, Helen , McKenna, Kirsten , Ollerenshaw, Alison
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Hydroinformatics Vol. 18, no. 2 (2016), p. 238-255
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- Description: The Visualising Victoria's Groundwater (VVG) web portal federates groundwater data for the State of Victoria, Australia, thus making legacy data, government datasets, research data and community sourced data and observations visible to the public. The portal is innovative because it was developed outside of the government and offers real-time accessto remote authoritative databases by integrating the interoperable web services they each provide. It includes tools for data querying and 3D visualisations that were designed to meet end-user needs and educate the broader community about a normally invisible resource. The social impact of the web portal was measured using multidisciplinary research that employed survey instruments, expert reference groups, and internet analytics to explore the extent to which the web portal has supported decision making by governments, industry, researchers and the community. The research found that single access, multiple data set web portals enhance capacity by providing timely, informed and accurate responses to answer queries and increase productivity by saving time. The provision of multiple datasets from disparate sources within a single portal has changed practices in the Victorian groundwater industry. © 2016 The Authors.
Use of digital technology for research data and information transfer within the Australian grains sector : a case study using Online Farm Trials
- Authors: Ollerenshaw, Alison , Murphy, Angela , Walters, Judi , Robinson, Nathan , Thompson, Helen
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Agricultural Systems Vol. 206, no. (2023), p.
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: CONTEXT: Agriculture is experiencing rapid change with the widespread availability of industry-specific technological and digital innovations. One example of this is Online Farm Trials (OFT), a user-facing web portal that systematises on-farm and field-based cropping research trial data for Australia's grains industry. The portal delivers access to research data, including legacy data, from thousands of grains trials projects that have been supplied by industry contributors. The portal is well established, having been informed by regular stakeholder input that has guided and informed the continued improvement of the portal from its development and implementation to continued operations. OBJECTIVE: Research was conducted across three time-points to assess the usage and application of OFT, and to examine its perceived impact on users to facilitate access to information supporting on-farm decision making and practice change within the Australian grains industry. METHODS: Quantitative and qualitative data (portal usage and website analytics, surveys, in-depth interviews) were collected at three time points over 6 years with the aim of examining the usage and application of the portal. Portal users, data contributors, and other stakeholders from the grains and agriculture industries participated in this research. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Over the three time points, a total of 89 surveys were completed and 49 interviews were conducted. Portal usage data confirms consistency in the number of visitors over time; most users of the portal were from Australia, with many accessing the portal on multiple occasions. Survey and interview data demonstrate that OFT is valued, widely used, and that the data on the portal are being broadly applied. Access to information and data through the portal (including legacy data) is used to support knowledge and to make sector-relevant decisions, and is assisting portal users in their workplace and work practices. The availability of data and information through the portal is increasing connections between industry and stakeholders across the grains sector. However, the trust and quality of contributor data has been consistently raised as a point of discussion by some portal users. SIGNIFICANCE: This research demonstrates the contribution that this data portal has on usage, adoption and application within the Australian grains industry. The insights and learnings about the application of digital technology for data and information access for the grains sector may be applicable to other agricultural sectors. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd